Making the Call!!

The mission has been set, you have one week to make the call and find your perfect surf spot. You have to document it, photos, stories and the send it to riki@snowcentre.co.nz

curve change mat

I received this change mat via a friend who won it as a prize in a contest, which is great cos I don’t review products I receive free. I view that as back scratching not reviewing, now with that clear.
The curve change mat is a great design in its simplicity, its one piece of what appears to be rubberized canvas with a drawstring, so it fits two purposes; a mat and a wet suit bag and with no seams to leak, or corners to fill with sand and no surprise it fits the niche well. It’s easy to clean, just pop the hose in the opening and fill with water, a quick shake and the wetsuit and change mat are clean, hang on the line, and its beer o’clock.
The change mat comes in its own surf magazine sized pouch and once on the ground it is well sized for keeping your wettie outta the sand.
Couple of downside I found was it wanted to blow away in all but the lightest breezes and I was concerned with long term durability when the drawstring appears to be sewn within only a single seam. Time will tell.
So over all it’s entirely well suited to its job, it looks good, protects feet and wetsuits from sharp car park gravel and stops the beach ending up in your car.
With the price halved recently to $49.95 RRP it’s a good deal if you can’t condone the car mat and plastic bin crowd. Me I don’t use it anymore but the flat mate finds it great for getting washing off the line.

Rating: Riders Anonymous rating 4/5

Use when: putting your wetsuit in the back of your new 4x4 or porche

From carving to carving

A brief time line history of how we got to where we are.
A wholly inaccurate explanation of our ancestors and how our past was shaped.

3000 B.C. The riding of reed rafts sitting or standing was practiced by Peruvians.

200 B.C sandwich islanders (Hawaii) are carving olo – a long wili- wili (balsa like) surfboard six inches thick through center of the board with a convex top and bottom shape so edges beveled to ½ inch all round these boards were also shaped of koa (mahogany) but normally only for alii (chiefs).
The other type was the alaia surfboard about 12 foot long for an adult and 1 ½ inches thick through the center beveling off to ¼ inch on the edge.
Lightning bolts were a common deck symbol.

1900 first imported Californian redwood and iron tools used for shaping surfboards in Hawaii.

1926 Tom Blake carves first hollow ‘cigar board’ a hollowed out olo board.

1932 Blake starts manufacturing hollow paddleboards (toothpicks) he later goes on to invent windsurfing, patent the surfboard fin.

1934 hot curl boards ‘olo’s with their back hacked off’ get surfers in the power pocket for the first time.

1945 Gardner Chaplin (Miki Dora’s step dad) meets Bob Simmons an aircraft engineer injured in an accident and introduces him to surfing. Bob promises to be surfing’s first innovator.

1947 Pete Peterson builds a hollow fiberglass surfboard.

1948 Bob Simmons builds a balsa railed Styrofoam centered fiberglass covered surfboard. Surfers everywhere say “on ya bob”

1955 Dale Velzy and Hap Jacobs develop and use router jig for shaping. (Early CNC ‘computer numerical coding’ shaper)

1957 Dave sweet starts building polyurethane foam surfboards.
Dow chemical hooks Hobie Alter up a couple of free polystyrene blanks but he deemed to light when test ridden? What?


1962 Barry Bennett starts blowing blanks in Australia.

1963 Average board is 9 feet 6 inches

1968 The short board revolution is starting, in a year boards lose 2-3 feet in length and hanging ten is nearly extinct. Australians Nat Young and Bob Mctavish lead the charge.
George Greenough on his kneeboard spoon was a major influence as he could get right in the barrel and turn hard on the face of the wave. Thank you George!!!!
Surfers leave the “sport” in droves unable to handle the short boards and unwilling to be uncool enough to stay with longer boards.
Average board is 6 foot 3 inches.

1971 July 7th Tom Morey plays around with Insulite foam and poly-ethylene and calls it the “boogie board” which goes on to become the most popular surf craft ever. Speaking of popular, the ‘kook cord’ was introduced much to the soul surfers’ disgust for about 6 months, and then it was widely accepted by all.
Cue early 70’s surf boom.

1972 First honeycomb surfboard developed by aqua jet!! (Thirty years later Salomon reintroduced this as ‘new’ technology)

1975 Renny Yater uses a computer to analyze volumetric efficiency and efficiency of template arcs and curves on surfboard design.

1979 CNC shaping for surfboards is first used.
Also Mark Richards was influenced by a board Ben Apia lent him which launches the ‘twin fin’ era, with style.


1980’s Maybe the drugs ran out cos the ideas sure did.
Apart from surfer’s starting to being influenced by skateboard style manoeuvres.
And that inauspicious day when Simon Anderson introduced what many people would later refer to as the ‘leg rope of the 80’s’, the thruster surfboard. The thruster was a direct reaction to the inability of many surfers to ride the pivoty twin fin. Suddenly with this user friendly board, surfing became as popular as tits. Thanks Simon.

1990’s saw the introduction of close tolerance foam blanks saving shapers precious time.

1991 Randy French makes epoxy fiberglass prototype surfboards promising stronger lighter surfboards, but the conservative surfing public isn’t ready.

1996 Greg Loehr introduces epoxy fiberglass sandwich ‘syntech boards’, twenty times stronger than polyester boards.

2000 In this new millennium, we can conclude that construction of our surf craft hasn’t changed much in 35 years; we just have a wider variety of board shapes.
Long and Short boarding are now on level pegging in popularity and innovation and as the construction methods for our craft finally edge their way towards being less environmentally damaging. This has been made possible with the introduction of stronger sun cure resins, quality epoxy sandwich construction and more resources being put into maintaining flex and feel while retaining strength.

Like the ancients we try to spend as much time as possible in the ocean, we thank Huey for the waves, grab what we’ve been able to craft or trade our time to buy and head out back for that beautiful ride to the shore.
I don’t give a fig what it’s made of but I try to buy locally made if it’s competitively priced and good quality.
If one day I couldn’t afford a board I’m sure I’d just go out and bodysurf it because it’s the ocean and me not the craft that matters anyway.

Way of the Bird

Way of the Bird
By Andrew Kidman & Andy Davis

In a world of mass produced similarity and disposable style the "different" can just be the new trend,
therefore ripe for the above treatment..Sometimes tho different can't be grasped by the marketing men
they just don't get it...
This book falls into this genre it is targeted for "surf children" ,yeah a bedtime book with a "Aloha" spirit,
board riding bent ? yeah the "duke's" great message of giving-receiving , loving and riding.
Damn it's got me thinking of the deprived childhood we had listening to the brothers grimm and treasure island. No really it's a great book,containing all the required ingredients ;short enough for a bedtime read and dream inducing pictures combining master photographer Andrew Kidmans photo's with Andy Davis's drawings
a partnership which works as good as fish & chips after a surf !
Now we come to the books downfall "the cloud in every silver lining" ,
Arguments i can see a few happening around this book, 'grommet' wants it in the bedroom and
you want it on the coffee table..
Mum's gonna have to put her 'foot down' so remember to act like an adult when the grommet gets their way.
Seriously a great book, at about $40 its not cheap and i don't think you'll ever find it in the bargain bin,
But it could be the best book you ever read to the kids.

Rating: 5/5

December Issue 12 Volume 1

This cover was taken two days befor e th issue went live. We were going to run the body board cover. Of you look closely at the covers you will notice a different range of stories between the two covers. thanks to a mishap some of the original content was missing and some of the stories I wanted to run never turned up on my laptop.

Both images were worthy of this months cover but at the end of the day the body board image was old and was being rehashed for this issue. The shot of Gumby forward flipping of the Snojam structure has so much colour and life it just needed to be posted


We are also starting to experiment with movies now too so if you have been filming some surf action send your mini vids to editor@ridersanonymous.co.nz Lets see if we can make RA TV

'Dora lives' Miki 'Da Cat' Dora

Dora lives the authorized story of Miki Dora
C. R. Stecyk III and Drew Kampion
Hardcover 135 pages
For me a great book transports the reader to another time/place, and portrays the feel and atmosphere of the place the author is writing from, Stecyk and Kampion, two great surf writers achieve this goal easily despite the complex subject which covers many facets of ‘Da Cat’s’ life/travels and apparent crimes from a first hand view point without letting the cult of legend distorting reality.
The great thing about Dora is his depth and paradox way he lived life. This book fed my interest but I’m left still wanting more information on the mystery that is Dora. What I really love is I know I’ll never figure the man out.
Few characters in the history of surfing could be harder to define than the enigmatic ‘Mikilos Caplin Dora’ a true innovator in style and the undisputed king of cool during the adolescence of the California surf scene as one of the crew at the undiscovered Malibu point.

He lived a simple life surfing with fellow legends ‘tubesteak’ and Kathy Kohner spending their days sliding and gliding in relative solitude living surfing and when the sun went down and the stars came out the freakishly stylish Miki would crash Hollywood parties, to all it seemed life was good… That was until Kathy’s dad penned the book Gidget and the whole world wanted to party and shoot the curl at the ‘Bu'.
Ironically and shockingly Dora featured in the film Gidget effectively sealing the loss of his utopia.
Dora suffered greatly from the ‘outing’ of his beach and reacted accordingly to the scores of surfers encroaching on his turf by flicking his board at surfers who dared share his waves and it was the most likely his actions that hastened the development of surf etiquette.
‘The angry young man of surfing’ left the ‘Bu for a life globe trotting the world including a stint at Mahia peninsular as a Mormon, and later in life he enjoyed Jeffrey’s bay where he lived with his best friend ‘scooter boy’ a cocker spaniel.
What really came to me from this book is Dora was always himself he never ever deviated from his path a true being he didn’t sell-out and he didn’t compromise. A true character in a lifestyle becoming increasingly P C and homogenized as its industries sell out by marketing to the masses rather than listening to its market. Dora is the surfers Che. VIVA Dora
Dora lives

November Cover Volume 1 Issue 11

This issue contains stories surrounding the Vodafone Surf Sessions. I wanted to use one of the action shots to do a cover similar to those the magazines would put out. I thought I had the chosen cover with this shot below of Mick Fanning. My brother and I debated on which shot to use, but then I gave in and went with the Andy Irons Shot.


Originally it was going to look like this but it just seemed a bit grey for a cover image . I was also struggling to find a good font and and grab statement for the cover . I was playing with the hue when I had the thought of the blood cover come to mind.

Out came the red again but as we had used it before it was time for something new. I played with a duplicate image of Andy to bring him brighter and forward in the image and then darken the background. While doing this and playing with the hue again I found a colour filter switch. Playing with this, I found the Crayon yellow background which gave the cover the final terrifying look of a horror movie. Saturday at Piha was nuts, 6-8 foot and maxing out, yet all the surfers charged. There were some good wipeouts which lead me to 'surfers to the Slaughter.

Siestas & Olas

Join in on a Mexican endless summer, where time is well utilised, seeking and finding waves on the Baja peninsula and the mainland Mexican coast.
For Tom Wegener, Josh Farberow, Marc Kavanagh, and special visitor, Joel Tudor, a 90-day visa is used to full effect.
Director Dan Wozniak (Ten Toes Over) narrates in fine “Endless Summer” style.
This is a well paced film of long and short boarding, including a huge variety of waves, from Matachen Bay’s five minute rides, to a left handed copy of Malibu and a pumping 20 - 60 foot wave at Petacalco.
However, its Joel Tudors section at pumping Mexican pipe, that he described as “my best barrel session ever”, that really steps the film up a gear.
The interweaving of Mexicali and surf music kept this an enjoyable and watchable film. It made me want to save up the money and go get my share of warm and uncrowded waves.
Best to watch: On those days when you don’t know which board to take out, or when you’re just chilling
Running time: 90 minutes.
Rating: 7.5/10

Can't you get along with anyone? A writers memoir

Allan c.Weisbecker
531 pages

The perfect wave in an isolated paradise...
Every surfers dream ? hell yes !
So how did famous surfing author Allen Weisbecker end up arming himself with a gun to go for a surf in paradise?
In this the third book by the author of 'Cosmic bandito's' and 'In search of captain zero' we
are taken deep into the actual events and mind of allan as paradise gets messed up big time.

This book is a memoir and i find it impossible to belive anything has been left out ,
in fact i'd find it hard to belive there would not be a huge group of people lining up to sue
allan into next century.
And i must forewarn you this book is a trip into the dark side of an authors mind as,
what can go wrong does go wrong ... big time.
I found this book quite difficult to read due to the total exposure by the author
and while it may not be my favorite book by the author i also couldn't put it down
and there is enough action to make your head spin,
It's all explained ;
what hollywood star he physically treatened ,
why a Hit was put out on him,
why his agent and editor ditched him
and how paradise was lost forever...

so over all this book created the full raft of human emotions in me
it wasn't what i expected or sought but it sure left a mark on my mind
and that to me signals a great author.

Rating ; 4/5 i wanted 'cosmic bandito's 2'.. but got so much more

October Cover Volume 1 Issue 10

Hey kiddies, here it is at last. The latest October issue of Riders Anonymous 10 days late. My computer was playing games with my pshycy so I sent it into the shop for repair.

In this issue I managed to get a couple of awesome days down south with Jordy from Ohakune and Nana Nathan from Oratia. We scored an epic bluebird day at Olympus but the snow never released for us to fully enjoy the expansive terrain on offer there. We ended up sessioning some kickers outside the top lodge.

The cover image was taken by myself and features Jordy just releasing the tail mid flight.

These last three images I have posted where taken on the first Monday of the school holidays. They feature Kyle (USA) Ketchup (Japanese girl with very long name and Nathan (Feet). Each of them showing there own personal style. These were my favourite pictures in this issue. I stood in the park on a glorious day for 2 hours and shot everyone who hit the big tables or the rails. There were over two hundred photos by the time I had finished.